Section 41

41. Intellection seems to have been given as an aid to
the diviner
but weaker beings, an eye to the blind. But the eye itself need not
see Being since it is itself the light; what must take the light
through the eye needs the light because of its darkness. If, then,
intellection is the light and light does not need the light, surely
that brilliance (The First) which does not need light can
have no need
of intellection, will not add this to its nature.

What could it do with intellection? What could even intellection
need and add to itself for the purpose of its act? It has no
self-awareness; there is no need. It is no duality but, rather, a
manifold, consisting of itself, its intellective act, distinct from
itself, and the inevitable third, the object of
intellection. No doubt
since knower, knowing, and known, are identical, all merges into a
unity: but the distinction has existed and, once more, such a unity
cannot be the First; we must put away all otherness from the Supreme
which can need no such support; anything we add is so much lessening
of what lacks nothing.

To us intellection is a boon since the soul needs it; to the
Intellectual-Principle it is appropriate as being one thing with the
very essence of the principle constituted by the intellectual Act so
that principle and act coincide in a continuous self-consciousness
carrying the assurance of identity, of the unity of the two. But
pure unity must be independent, in need of no such assurance.

"Know yourself" is a precept for those who, being manifold, have
the task of appraising themselves so as to become aware of the
number and nature of their constituents, some or all of which they
ignore as they ignore their very principle and their manner of
being. The First on the contrary if it have content must exist in a
way too great to have any knowledge, intellection, perception of it.
To itself it is nothing; accepting nothing, self-sufficing, it is
not even a good to itself: to others it is good for they have need
of it; but it could not lack itself: it would be absurd to
suppose The
Good standing in need of goodness.

It does not see itself: seeing aims at acquisition: all this it
abandons to the subsequent: in fact nothing found elsewhere can be
There; even Being cannot be There. Nor therefore has it intellection
which is a thing of the lower sphere where the first
intellection, the
only true, is identical with Being. Reason, perception,
intelligence, none of these can have place in that Principle in
which no presence can be affirmed.